The Laurel Award recognizes lifetime achievement in outstanding writing for motion pictures. Stoppard, who has been a WGA member since 1991, won an Academy Award for his screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love." He has also penned the screenplay for "Anna Karenina" and the television series "Parade's End" in recent years.

"A television writer since 1965 and a screenwriter since 1975, Tom Stoppard brings wit, elegance, and heart to all he composes. We did not want to let his acknowledged brilliance as a playwright to blind us to his dramatic talents in our own field. From 'The Romantic Englishwoman through Despair,' 'The Human Factor,' 'Brazil,' 'Empire of the Sun,' 'The Russia House,' 'Billy Bathgate,' 'Shakespeare in Love,' 'Enigma,' 'Vatel,' and this past year's 'Anna Karenina,' Stoppard's screenplays delight, disturb, entrance. Whether adapting the masters – Nabokov, Greene, Ballard, le Carré, Doctorow, Tolstoy – or crafting his own tales, Stoppard brings dignity and coherence to the act of imagination," WGAW vice president Howard A. Rodman said in a statement.